As You Sow Files Notice Of Legal Action Against Soylent Super Food - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/sow-files-notice-legal-action-against-soylent-super-200000801.html <comment><USER2> One of those press releases that doesn't provide any context. What exactly is a "California Safe Harbor" level? How does that compare to a Clean Water Act level of safe lead.

Not trying to defend Soylent here, but these types of press releases don't provide any useful context.

<comment><USER3> It's a bit confusing. I think this is the current list of maximum allowable levels and safe harbor levels:

[http://www.oehha.ca.gov/prop65/pdf/safeharbor081513.pdf](http://www.oehha.ca.gov/prop65/pdf/safeharbor081513.pdf)

EDIT: someone asked for the safe harbor levels. I provide a link to the current safe harbor levels. I'm not sure why this deserves a downvote?

<comment><USER4> I don't either. Upvoted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's As You Sow's own site info on this.[1] The info is about the same. They're using the California act because a private party can bring an action under that act.

"One serving of Soylent 1.5 can expose a consumer to a concentration of lead that is 12 to 25 times above California's Safe Harbor level." That would mean 12 * 15 micrograms per day. Soylent's suggested serving size is 0.5 liter, so that would be a lead level of 90 micrograms / liter. The EPA's action level for lead in water is 15 micrograms / liter. So they're 6x over the allowed maximum level for water. (That's the maximum level allowed for water; the desired level, according to the EPA, is zero.)

On the other hand, heavy metal levels are routinely higher in foodstuffs than in water, because plants and animals concentrate them. It gets worse as you go up the food chain; mercury in shark and swordfish is a real issue. The EU and WHO allow a level of provisional tolerable weekly intake (PTWI) of 25μg/kg body weight. US male mean body weight is about 85kg, so that would be 2125μg/kg/week, or 101μg/kg/serving, or about 200 micrograms/liter (1 liter water masses 1kg, so assume that density). So Soylent, at 90 micrograms/liter, is about half the usual limit. That's pushing it, though; a small person drinking four servings a day of the stuff could go over the limit.

Because Soylent wants to be the only dietary component, they need pharmaceutical grade quality control. They should be running a sample of every batch through a mass spectrometer, and testing their raw materials. Given their emphasis on how "online" and "digital" they are, you ought to be able to view the analysis for your batch on line.

[1] [http://www.asyousow.org//?s=soylent](http://www.asyousow.org//?s=soylent) [2] [http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX...](http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:02006R1881-20100701&from=EN)

</comment><comment><USER6> The soylent forums have discussed this quite a lot in the past and people who seem to know what they're talking about have come to the conclusion that the levels are both nothing to worry about and also significantly under a lot of traditional food. [http://discourse.soylent.com/t/question-about- proposition-65...](http://discourse.soylent.com/t/question-about- proposition-65-warning-in-faq/22132/18)

Also, As You Sow appears to be a woo-peddler, so I would be less than inclined to take their word without independent confirmation.

Edit: And their CEO doesn't seem to be taking their complaint terribly seriously either - he issued the following statement recently.

"Andrew here. Most of what I was trying to do is get a conversation going around food safety, and it worked. I smile at every in depth analysis on lead or cadmium that I triggered. Oh no! You just proved me wrong and educated all the readers of your comment, as well as learned more yourself."

<comment><USER4> I have never in my life seen the term 'woo-peddler'. For anyone else in a similar situation, it's roughly equivalent to snake-oil salesman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here are the California Safe Harbor levels for [1]:

      Lead:    15 micrograms/day
      Cadmium: 4.1 micrograms/day

The EPA's safe water regulations for lead are [2]:

      If more than 10% of tap water samples exceed the lead action level of 15 parts
      per billion

Which is 15 micrograms/liter.

Cadmium is 5 ppb.

[1] [http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/pdf/safeharbor081513.pdf](http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/pdf/safeharbor081513.pdf)

[2] [http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/basicinformation/lea...](http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/basicinformation/lead.cfm)

[3] [http://www.epa.gov/safewater/pdfs/factsheets/ioc/cadmium.pdf](http://www.epa.gov/safewater/pdfs/factsheets/ioc/cadmium.pdf)

<comment><USER8> FTA:

Test results commissioned by As You Sow, conducted by an independent laboratory, show that one serving of Soylent 1.5 can expose a consumer to a concentration of lead that is 12 to 25 times above California's Safe Harbor level for reproductive health, and a concentration of cadmium that is at least 4 times greater than the Safe Harbor level for cadmium. Two separate samples of Soylent 1.5 were tested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This press release would have been more useful to me if they had given details of the testing.

Did independant labs buy the products direct from Soylent, or was the products supplied by a third party to the testing lab?

Was a single lab used? Are they an accredited lab?

If true (and that's a big if at the moment) this is just another confirmation that Soylent is cavalier around a product that they really should be careful about.

Of course, this press release may well be bollocks and Soylent might do rigorous QA testing on every batch, using accredited labs and posting the results to a public webpage.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is "just" a press release made by As You Sow in its un-edited form. This doesn't necessarily make it claim invalid, but just remember that no journalist have been involved here.

It is also weird that As You Sow hasn't added any mention of whether or not they have tried to contact Soylent for a comment.

<comment><USER10> I sure hope they contacted soylent prior to publicizing. It casts pretty bad assertions despite little or no apparent corroboration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is this comparing allowed levels in drinking water to whats allowed in food? if so then its apples and oranges. I would like to see if it compared to whats allowed in food.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hold up. They found massive levels of Lead in the product?

EDIT: To all those wondering why they were not first contacted before going to a court: this PRNewswire piece is a public notice of them telling Soylent that there is Lead in the product.

Personally (and tangentially), I feel this is how software exploits should be treated in open source software; let people know immediately so _all_ the eyeballs focus on a solution, rather than a subset.

<comment><USER12> Unlike open source software nobody can look how Soylent produced the product, and why would anybody outside Soylent work on a solution?

PRNewswire is indeed a public notice. But so is Oracle telling the world that Google is bad for poising Java (can't remember their exact argument).

<comment><USER3> You don't really need to see how they made the product. If you have the money you can send it for independent testing; or you can ask regulators to do so for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone know if any other groups have independently verified this? Bad batch? Potential contaminatdd samples?

<comment><USER14> Depending on where the source crops are grown it could easily be a raw materials problem that nobody ever even considered as a possibility so they didn't test. As a related thing, consider arsenic in rice due to where it's grown.

Edit: addressed here, with comparisons to other meals. Brown rice protein is the source. [https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en- us/articles/204197379-Californ...](https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en- us/articles/204197379-California-Proposition-65)

<comment><USER15> When ordering ingredients in powder form from China in bulk batches, you get MSDS analysis. But in my experience you cannot rely on that info. I have received completely random papers from factories, which made me avoid China entirely when it come to ingredients for human consumption.

<comment><USER14> In 2008 Trader Joe's pulled foods sourced from China of their shelves after one too many adulteration stories (not affecting their products AFAIK), I'm not sure if that still holds but clearly you're not the only one who has been concerned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The stated reason for replacing rice protein with soy in their 2.0 formula was texture/mouthfeel, but I bet it has something to do with this as well.

Why does rice tend to have such high heavy metal content? Is it simply coincidence w/ where rice tends to be grown?

</comment><comment><USER16> Is there a better source than "Yahoo.com" for this?

<comment><USER17> Possibly Pacer, if anyone with access can find a copy of the complaint. Otherwise, probably not, given that this is a press release from the plaintiff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ouch... Well whatever this is its how a startup goes under- Fast

</comment><comment><USER19> If they haven't already, Soylent will do their own testing and release the results. If it turns out to be true, they will fix it and take their lumps. If it is false, they can counter-sue, should they choose.

</comment><comment><USER20> You've gotta tell 'em! SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE! We gotta stop them! Somehow!

</comment><comment><USER14> Interesting. I don't see any indication in the article that they contacted Soylent first so they could do little things like recall it. I'm sure that a bunch of the Soylent staff are heavy consumers of their product so I suspect they'd take the matter very seriously, and since it's only available from them I'm pretty sure they have contact information for everyone who has it.

So I'm going to paraphrase as follows: "As You Sow," a group claiming to be an environmental watchdog, noted a likely safety problem with Soylent and instead of notifying the manufacturer to minimize the harm to consumers chose to file a lawsuit.

Edit: less inflammatory paraphrase

<comment><USER17> Sometimes there's an 'unclean hands' defense if someone didn't take reasonable steps to minimize the harm they suffered. Courts can be suspicious of plaintiffs who allow harm to accrue in order to sue for more damages.

That said, I'm only speaking in general. I don't claim to know anything about the factual background of this particular case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The organization opposes GMO foods: [http://www.asyousow.org/our- work/environmental-health/gmos/](http://www.asyousow.org/our- work/environmental-health/gmos/)

So I value their opinion about as much as I do Dr. Jenny McCarthy's pioneering work on vaccinations.

<comment><USER22> You're entitled to your opinion, and I share your views on Jenny McCarthy, but there are plenty of health, environmental, and economic reasons to oppose GMO food, none of which are the issue here. It's alleged that lead and cadmium levels are too high, which is verifiable and so not a matter of opinion.

Even if they were within safe limits, I still wouldn't want to take a food replacement. I like food, and don't think time eating it is time wasted. YMMV.

<comment><USER23> I find the argument "I like food" against Soylent confusing. Most people who eat Soylent like food IMO. I eat Soylent and LOVE food. I don't like having to spend so much of every day sourcing, cooking, eating, and cleaning up after food. I've removed all of the rushed, low quality, and/or boring meals from my life while saving money and getting better nutrition(except perhaps my lead intake!) Now I only eat the delicious, interesting, and slow-paced meals. Not attempting to change your mind, just informing it's not just food hating people. Haha!</comment></comment></comment>


Why your desk job is so damn exhausting - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/9/5/17818170/work-fatigue-exhaustion-psychology <comment><USER2> > Instead, they found this small correlation: The nurses who were least likely > to feel fatigued from their work also felt the most in control of their > work, and the most rewarded for it.

> Why we need to figure out fatigue

We don't--refer to first quote. Just make our jobs autonomous and rewarding in some way.</comment>


Heliogen's new tech could unlock renewable energy for industrial manufacturing - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/19/heliogens-new-technology-could-unlock-renewable-energy-for-industrial-manufacturing/ <comment><USER2> Can someone please explain where the innovation is here? I'm not very familiar with solar generation.

Given that we know the suns position and that of the mirrors, how is computer vision able to better aim the mirrors?

What am I missing?

<comment><USER3> This article explains the technology in much more detail

[https://www.vox.com/science-and- health/2019/11/19/20970252/c...](https://www.vox.com/science-and- health/2019/11/19/20970252/climate-change-solar-heat-heliogen-csp)

<comment><USER4> That's kind of neat. Just four cameras near the target point, watching the spillover from each mirror of the mirror array, and adjusting each mirror.

Keeping the cameras from being blinded by direct hits during startup and adjustment might be a problem. They probably have to start with all mirrors off-target and bring them onto target one at a time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting application for concentrated solar. If you just need heat instead of electricity, it's suddenly more efficient.

Sucks if you have a cement factory in Seattle, you're going to have a harder time competing with one in California.

<comment><USER6> Cement markets are pretty local. It's cheap enough to manufacture and the raw materials are so abundant that it doesn't make sense to transport cement long distances.

<comment><USER5> If this were a big enough cost advantage, suddenly it might make sense to transport over longer distances. Putting the carbon saved back into the process. The law of unintended consequences is a harsh mistress.

<comment><USER7> Transportation has to become more expensive in the green future so that pushes back towards local manufacturing.

<comment><USER8> Why? Can't everything become cheaper in the green future?

<comment><USER7> In the long term it may be cheaper once ground transportation is fully electrified and air is running on carbon-neutral synthetic fuels. During the transition period I would expect transportation to be more expensive.

<comment><USER8> Why? Won't the advent of carbon-neutral synthetic fuels made with abundant solar energy (whether PV or thermal) start lowering the price of ICE-driven transport? What likely events would happen in the interim to raise the prices higher?

<comment><USER7> I predict that a carbon tax (or something similar) would motivate replacement of all ICE ground vehicles with battery electric before carbon capture becomes cheap. Then later when synthetic fuels arrive they'll only be used by airplanes. It's possible technologies could arrive in a different order though.

<comment><USER8> Oh, yeah, a carbon tax would certainly make it more expensive to run ICE ground vehicles. I don't think of that as a "technology" though.

When you say, "when synthetic fuels arrive", do you mean the Fischer-Tropsch process developed during World War I? I think that's the most likely candidate process for synfuels. It's reasonably efficient but it uses a lot of energy, because fuels contain a lot of energy — that's why we use them. By coincidence last week I read a bunch of papers by Heather Willauer et al. of NRL about producing synfuels with Fischer-Tropsch from seawater, using an electrolytic acidification process with cation exchange to drive CO₂ out of the water and generate the requisite hydrogen at the same time. The paper with the most comprehensive workout of the costs was ECONOMIC COMPARISONS OF LITTORAL PRODUCTION OF LOW CARBON FUEL FROM NON-FOSSIL ENERGY SOURCES AND SEAWATER, from 2017. You should read it if you're interested in the topic!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From what I read on the site here and on a Guardian article it looks like it is a modified Solar tower.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#Solar...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#Solar_power_tower)

I don't see where AI comes in at all.

<comment><USER10> I think the challenge is that when the sun is variable, you have to constantly regulate the manufacturing process to get consistent output. You have to see clouds coming and scale back the feed rate of whatever material you're heating in advance.

<comment><USER11> What do you mean by the sun being variable? Don't we already know where the sun is going to be at anytime for the entire year?

<comment><USER10> Clouds.

<comment><USER11> Right, but if there are clouds in the way there's not a lot that you can do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So in principle, couldn't you aim the mirrors in a straightforward way by attaching some kind of radiation emitter (maybe pulsed) to the collector? If the mirror can sense the sunlight angle and the incident angle of the sentry, you don't need _any_ additional position information — the mirror plane is normal to the angle bisector.

</comment><comment><USER13> This smacks of a manufactured PR piece.

<comment><USER14> > ...the serial entrepreneur and investor.

I still don't understand the virtue of being a "serial entrepreneur", especially with no indication of what businesses were created. It just sounds like someone who bailed on several previous companies that aren't even worth mentioning.

<comment><USER15> > I still don't understand the virtue of being a "serial entrepreneur", > especially with no indication of what businesses were created.

They certainly should have elaborated a bit. It's Bill Gross from Idealab. He has a long entrepreneurial history and quite mixed record of meaningful successes and spectacular failures.

"Prior to Idealab, Gross founded GNP Loudspeakers (now GNP Audio Video), an audio equipment manufacturer; GNP Development Inc., acquired by Lotus Software; and Knowledge Adventure, an educational software company, later acquired by Cendant."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_T._Gross](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_T._Gross)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealab)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is really nice. I just wonder whether it heats the air so much near the focal point that it creates an updraft that pulls in and fries insects and birds? (Not that this would stop it from bring a net-positive.)

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks interesting, but it's not hot enough yet for a lot of industrial processes. E.g. iron melts at ~1500C and this is currently at ~1000C.

<comment><USER17> You also tend to have higher air pressure in hot sunny area's needed for this tech and that will also increase the melting point of iron. So whilst a small detail, certain one that would be measurable on running costs/energy needed.

<comment><USER10> The melting point of iron doesn't depend noticeably on pressure with the range of atmospheric pressures, as you can see from the flat lines in the phase diagram at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron#/media/File:Pure_iron_pha...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron#/media/File:Pure_iron_phase_diagram_\(EN\).png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What was the power output that was generated by all those mirrors, and what was the area of the footprint for the facility?

</comment><comment><USER19> Someone was asking me about trigering fusion with this, and i think fusion at the core of the sun is at millions °C, and at the surface you get 5500°C, so beacuse photons carry entropy and the photons of the surface is what you see, you will never be hotter than the surface of the sun, even as much rays you can concentrate. It is not a mather of how much rays you get but of pure entropy. Hotter means more entropy. You can not create more entropy in this case.

Please someone correct me if im wrong.

<comment><USER8> Photons don't carry entropy, creating more entropy is easy, and hotter doesn't mean more entropy. However, you're correct that you can't reach temperatures higher than the surface of the sun by concentrating sunlight (because that would _destroy_ some entropy), and that you need millions of degrees for an appreciable rate of fusion.

Hope this helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Solar furnaces [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_furnace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_furnace) have been useful for reaching especially high temperatures since at least Trombe's 1949 furnace, which can hit 3500°, without computer vision or even closed-loop control. So why is a 1500° solar furnace being touted as a groundbreaking innovation and a new high-temperature landmark?

A friend asked me what I thought about this earlier, based on a somewhat better reprinting of their press release:

[https://www.geekwire.com/2019/company-backed-bill-gates- clai...](https://www.geekwire.com/2019/company-backed-bill-gates-claims- breakthrough-concentrated-solar-energy-promising-replace-fossil-fuels- industrial-plants/)

Scroll back to 2010, when Bill Gross started working on this. That's when he got funded by that dude whose futurism book about the Information Superhighway, _The Road Ahead_ , didn't mention _the internet_. In 1995. In 2010, photovoltaic modules cost €1.62 per watt. Concentrating solar power was a promising alternative; it uses the same steam engines used by coal and nuclear power plants, so at scale it should be just as cheap as they are, as long as you can get the cost of the heliostats under control somehow and scale up. It also didn't have that pesky intermittency problem PV modules have: you can store the heat overnight.

Since then, though, heat engines have become economically uncompetitive relative to PV, because PV modules now cost €0.19 per watt, where they've been stuck all year. And steam turbines, almost a century and a half old, aren't improving or getting cheaper rapidly the way PV has been. Being just as cheap as coal isn't a blessing anymore; it's a handicap.

So, if you've been working on CSP and filing patents for a decade before getting your pilot plant up and running, a decade during which the PV market has left your product's price in the dust, what do you do? You look for a possible use where CSP is still viable, such as process heat; you hire a good PR firm; you announce that you won't be building any plants, but you're "willing to partner with" companies that want to build your design; and you hope to God nobody says "Solyndra".

But what's the actual invention? It seems like the actual news is that Bill Gross has patented some aspect of his closed-loop control system using webcams and GPU-accelerated CV to figure out where the mirrors are pointing to improve your concentration factor. The key improvement that made it possible was better GPUs, according to the press release, anyway.

So what happened, from the point of view of anyone outside Idealab, is that now Idealab and Intellectual Ventures will sue you if you do this fairly obvious thing of using high-resolution webcams for precise heliostat control.

So, when would this be a sensible thing to do?

Trombe's solar furnace and similar devices are able to compete quite effectively in the "market" for process heat at the 2500–3500° level, since, as I said, 1949. (I guess Bill's PR firm didn't know this, or hopes you don't.) That's a level almost impossible to achieve using fire (oxy-acetylene burns at 3500° under ideal conditions), and difficult even with arc furnaces. But Bill's thing is designed for a more prosaic 1000–1500° level, where it's competing not only with fire but also Kanthal or SiC fed from PV, wind, hydro, and nukes, as well as induction, dielectric heating, and microwave heating.

The potential advantage of CSP for process heat at these lower temperatures is that it's cheap and abundant. If you fill a field with mirrors, they can harvest 6× as much power than PV modules covering the same field can. But if land area is your limiting factor, your cement plant or steel mill or whatever probably isn't in the middle of a big field; it's using a lot more energy than your land receives in sunlight. In that case, you probably want to pull your power from someplace further off, whether in the form of coal, oil, gas, biomass, or electricity. Probably electricity from PV panels if we're talking about anything post-2030.

But suppose you _can_ put your factory in the field where the mirrors are, and the limiting resource isn't land but money. In that case, it might be a reasonable approach. PV modules cost €30 a square meter now. That's probably more expensive than mirrors, if you take into account that mirrors give you 6x as much energy: €180 per square meter is the price mirrors have to beat, and that seems doable.

But now you are on notice: if you do that, make sure it's in a country where Intellectual Ventures's shell companies haven't gotten a patent on it, or you have to deal with patent trolls. The press release reprinted above is clear: as with IV's laser mosquito swatter, they aren't going to make it happen themselves, but they'll definitely "partner with" you if you try.

I think we're about to see a giant boom in shitty "do well-known thing X, but with computer vision" patents similar to the shitty "do well-known thing X, but on a computer/on the internet" patents that plagued us in the early 2000s. The availability of massive GPU power means that many things that used to be impractical to do with video data have become possible.

<comment><USER20> The wikipedia article you linked doesn't actually reference any supposed solar furnaces capable of reaching or exceeding 1000 celsius. Even the project linked in the 1000 celsius bullet point states it only reaches approximately 500 celsius on its own wikipedia page (and at the project's own website).

Note, importantly, as with all things scale matters. There are solar furnaces the size of a pot that have reached 3000 celsius or more. This is not very useful for _industrial_ scale activities.

Presumably one of the breakthroughs is that Heliogen can achieve 1000 celsius _at an industrial scale_ which is not something that appears to have been done before with purely solar energy.

<comment><USER8> > _The wikipedia[sic] article you linked doesn 't actually reference any > supposed[sic] solar furnaces capable of reaching or exceeding 1000 > celsius[sic]._

It does; it references the one at Odeillo, which exceeds 3000°, according to this open-access paper by one of its instigators: [https://journals.openedition.org/histoire- cnrs/2661](https://journals.openedition.org/histoire-cnrs/2661) This "supposed solar furnace", as you term it, finished construction in 1969 and receives 75,000 visitors per year.

> _Presumably one of the breakthroughs is that Heliogen can achieve 1000 > celsius[sic]_ at an industrial scale _which is not something that appears to > have been done before with purely solar energy._

The question of "scale" is essentially one of power — the press release explains that you can expect about one megawatt per acre (250 MW/km² in modern units), and contemplates that you might want to build plants that scale up to _two_ megawatts. To me, that sounds pretty small for industrial scale, but the Odeillo solar furnace is already one megawatt.

Why power rather than volume? Well, you can heat an arbitrarily large or small thing to an arbitrarily high temperature with an arbitrarily large or small amount of power if it's well enough insulated, and modern insulation is very good. But if your heating doesn't have enough power, it will be very slow on a large amount of material, and if it's fighting things like endothermic chemical reactions, it may lose.

Heliogen's press release explains that their pilot plant has 400 mirrors on two acres, so it's probably about two megawatts — twice the size of the 3500° Odeillo, but much lower temperature, and a tiny fraction of the size of existing commercial CSP plants, which run around 600° as explained earlier.

<comment><USER20> I think you're ignoring a key point of Heliogen's design function. Heliogen is designed to be used _directly_ as the furnace in industrial applications for making steel, cement, etc.

The Odeillo solar furnace can reach higher temperatures but can't _transmit_ them--it can only heat steam, which is a poor transmitter of heat energy to industrial materials.

Ideally, both of these designs would be incorporated together--one to drive the machinery (the Odeillo design) and the other to do the actual physical _work_ of heating the materials (the Heliogen design).

<comment><USER8> There's nothing to suggest that Heliogen's design is in any way particularly suitable for transmitting heat to somewhere else or for putting a cement kiln or blast furnace at the focus of the mirrors. On the contrary, their pilot plant sites the focus at the top of a tall tower, like many existing CSP power plants, which is a particularly inconvenient place to put a cement kiln, though not unheard of.

For driving machinery you probably want lower temperatures, like the 600° existing coal, nuclear, and CSP power plants use for driving machinery. Coal and nuclear plants could easily generate higher temperatures, but there are a variety of practical difficulties that arise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I thought the problem with CSP was excessive concentration, e.g. when tonopah plant blasted a hole in the side of their tower.

</comment><comment><USER22> Somebody please tell me that I should not lose sleep about this scenario: Take this array of mirrors and mount them to a cloud of drones. Launch it on a sunny day, fly it to the correct position and focus a greater than 1000 degree Celsius beam of photons on your enemies.

The scary thing about this is that it requires nothing more than mirrors, drones and software, and not a deep military industrial complex.

<comment><USER23> Sounds a lot more complex than "strap grenade to drone, with actuator to pull pin", and no more effective.

<comment><USER22> Sunlight is easier to source than explosives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This, coupled with new software-defined microinverters that work _whether the grid is up or down_ [1], is changing the game worldwide for safe solar AC. I for one am very excited.

[1] [https://enphase.com/en-us/ensemble-technology-enphase- instal...](https://enphase.com/en-us/ensemble-technology-enphase-installers)

</comment><comment><USER25> This ain't new tech, buzzword + solar tower = headlines. I really love this method of solar though, minimal carbon footprint, ~0% efficiency decay. Coupled w a Sterling engine could even be used for small, off grid energy source.

</comment><comment><USER26> Bogus stuff here.

Will explain why in a later comment, you have to think through the embodied energy flow and materials required to transport etc...as well as solar capacity factor domestically and globally.

</comment><comment><USER26> Solar panels and Steel Windturbines are manufactured from hydrocarbon feedstock.

Solar and wind drawdowns are powered by natural gas peaking.

Transporting energy intensive Cement and other feedstocks that are manufactured in areas of "renewables viability" are moved with non-renewables sources. (low sulfur bunker fuel maritime ships, diesel-lng-cng trucks, and large earth movers)

Most of the world's volumetric cement consumption happens in areas with low quality/intensity solar.

</comment><comment><USER27> > _Previous commercial concentrating solar thermal systems could only reach > temperatures of 565 degrees Celsius, the company said. That's useful for > generating power, but can't meet the needs of industrial processes._

Or we could build more nuclear power plants, which have the duty cycle necessary for industrial applications. It's no wonder that the more conservative politicians seem to love nuclear more: it's a _pro-business, pro- industry_ carbon-free energy source, unlike wind and solar (or the insane amount of batteries to make it work.

<comment><USER28> While there are many benefits to nuclear power, this quote is at odds with your comment. Nuclear power suffers a low Carnot efficiency (around 30-40%), as it has an even lower operating temperature than the criticised old CSP design. While nuclear reactors can get arbitrarily hot, practical and safety considerations limit current designs to relatively low (and thus inefficient) temperatures.

Nuclear is also less practical for direct industrial use or distributed deployment because of safety concerns, with only a few exceptional cases like military marine propulsion.

<comment><USER29> The OP also ignores the staggering cost to commission _and_ decommission a nuclear plant. Costs to decommission alone are $1-4 billion.

Solar can be deployed quicker, cheaper, and faster for anyone without access to a decade timespan and a billions of dollars of capital.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There is only 1 solutions for climate change and 1 that can slow it down fast enuff to give us the time to possible get the only solution to work. Onley Nuclear reactors is clean enuff to slow down the the co2 released in to the atmosphere. 4gram co2/kWh/0.05$ it produces sheep enuff electricity to use carbon catcher and convert energy of co2 to something else. 200gram co2 would set the electricity prices at 0.25$/kWh to customers and we are soon out of drinking water in the world's so 50% on co2 and 50% convert salt water to fresh water will set the electricity price at ~0.45$/kWh. That will buy us time to hopefully figure out fusion before 2080. No one knows if its even possible that we can control that kind of energy to produce electricity for civil use. To just fill the electricity demand the world would need 50 new reactors every week untill 2035 to avoid a global energy crisis, and we would still need fusion before 2080 to start the amount of co2 to go back to as it was in the 1980s before 2200. Renewable energy will never even make a visual mark on a energy production of zero co2 graf and less of one, on the negative co2 graf. Renewable will be a good alternative on some very geografical optimal places that's it. Alot of people this day seems to forget that the E in the formula E=mc2 stands for Energy=everything(mass) both are the same and lay the ground for 1916 general relativity theory. Better known as the law of physics or easier, reality... just run the numbers, GRT doesn't care about money, politics or magic... it's simply predict what work and don't with the same certainty as it predict the time and date for the next solar eclipse.</comment>


Damn you, Arduino...I have no free time for this. - <AUTHOR> http://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/10/damn-you-arduino-i-have-no-free-time-for-this/ <comment><USER2> Ryan, I really like a lot of your posts, but some of them feel a little light for HN. This one could be summarized as "I got an Arduino, Physical products are really cool". Kind of bummed its #1 right now. Nothing personal against you, just that personality rather than content seems to be rocketing things up the page.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's fair, and this is the thing I worry about the most with my blog. Part of the problem is that a bunch of my readers aren't technical, so I sometimes wonder how deep I should go on technical posts. As far as HN goes, I submit a lot of the stuff I write, but _only_ because a fairly large percentage seems to find some traction here, so I guess people enjoy it. That's not necessarily proof that it's quality content, but as I've written about in the past, it's really hard for me to gauge whether I'm ultimately creating value through my writing. Popularity isn't really as useful a metric as one might think :)

Anyway, thanks for the comment, and let me know what kinds of posts of mine you've enjoyed, and what I can do to make all my posts more valuable to you.

EDIT: I should add that my recent post on finding a good IDE found little traction, despite being more in-depth and technical. Perhaps it was just a fluke though...

EDIT 2: I've updated the blog post with a more in-depth review of the Arduino and the Sparkfun kit.

<comment><USER3> As someone who grew up on Dick Smith's Fun Way Into Electronics kits [1], I love the Arduino. I can see three Arduinos on my desk as I type. I'm not so smart with electronics, but it is a lot of fun, and it's a golden age for this kind of thing.

[1] Dick Smith is a successful Aussie entrepreneur who created a chain of hobby electronics stores and sold the chain when it had (I think) 200 employees and he couldn't remember all their names, so it wasn't so much fun anymore.

When Redhead matches was bought by overseas interests, he created Dickhead matches in protest and sold them in Aussie supermarkets.

He jumped a double-decker bus over 15 motorbikes when I was a kid, parodying Evel Knievel. He was my hero.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Smith_(entrepreneur)>

He recently created the Wilberforce award - "$1 million to go to a young person under 30 who can impress me by becoming famous through his or her ability to show leadership in communicating an alternative to our population and consumption growth-obsessed economy."

<http://dicksmithpopulation.com/wilberforce-award/>

"It has become obvious to me that my generation has over exploited our wonderful world – and it's younger people who will pay the price."

Edit: He's also a founder and patron of the Australian Skeptics.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Skeptics>

Edit 2: Picture of the bus jumping the motorcycles

<http://www.dropbears.com/m/models/specials/busjump.htm>

<comment><USER4> You might enjoy this nostalgic look back at the Fun Way kits: [http://tronixstuff.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/australian- elect...](http://tronixstuff.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/australian-electronics- nostalgia-funway-kits/) :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Small world. I actually worked on some of the content for the Inventor's Kit guide. When you read "You want orange, you want teal, you want aubergine!" that's me. :)

Happy to receive feedback on the guide as you work through it.

I was introduced to the Arduino nearly four years ago and actually earn income now from Physical Computing related teaching, writing and project development.

Creating tangible things and escaping the world of the purely virtual is really fun. (I write as I'm surrounded by a soldering iron and a bunch of XBee related components. :) )

(I was actually planning to submit the original of the following video but DEFCON's taken them down for some reason. But...if you're interested in a security-slanted introduction to the Arduino you might be interested in this session I co-presented at DEFCON18 this year about the Arduino: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XotF9FyiAZc> )

If you get the chance to play with some of this stuff, do it!

[Oh, and, that whole flashing LED buzz is an interesting phenomenon and it continues as you gain experience--except instead of signifying you've got everything installed okay it might mean your signal has reached the satellite and returned back again. :D ]

<comment><USER5> I already bought an Arduino, but now I want all this stuff from the inventor kit! Should I just buy parts as I need, or are there any other kits like this?

<comment><USER4> I'm most familiar with the SparkFun kits and I don't think all the same components are available in a separate kit without the Arduino.

Although, I would say, I don't think you can have too many Arduinos. :D

You can buy the individual components separately but sometimes the bundled price is less.

This kit still has the Arduino but might be another option with a smaller selection: [http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i...](http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=9952)

Or if you want to go all out there's this megabundle of sensors with no Arduino: [http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i...](http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=10027) :)

Hope that helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's been brought to my attention that this post is disappointingly light on content and substance, and after some careful reflection, I agree. So I've updated the post with a more in-depth review of the Arduino and Sparkfun Inventor's Kit. This is intended largely for technical people who haven't played with electronics much, but are interested in getting started. Let me know if there's other things I can cover in the review, and I'll try to be more in-depth and judicious with my submissions in the future.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've had other people tell me the same thing.

I've been an embedded software guy forever so it can be hard to remember how much fun it was to blink an LED, but the excitement on the faces of experienced (non-embedded) SW people when they blink that first LED, or move a servo motor or whatever is palpable. There's a reason I never moved onto the desktop or server world: this stuff is addictive :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> You can replicate this delightful experience with:

      *A normal breadboard and circuit components

      *Matlab with DAQ Toolbox included (not all versions have this toolbox)

      *An analog to digital converter, such as a National Instruments USB-6008

</comment><comment><USER8> I work for SparkFun and feel the same way: there is simply never enough time for projects :) I was just talking to marketing to see if I could get a HN discount code if anyone wants to play with an Arduino for the first time. If you're interested shoot me an email and I'll see if I can convince them; email@example.com

<comment><USER9> What Arduino kit would you recommend for a "competent" beginner? Is the linked kit a good option? Better options? Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER8> The inventor's kit is really great if you are getting started or re-started. If you've got a specific project in mind you want to work on, I'd highly recommend any of the Arduino "shields" that match your project. We (and others) have them with GPS, LCDs, an Ethernet stack, GSM modules, wifi -- you name it. It keeps the simplicity of the Arduino platform, but lets you play with more advanced stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For anyone in the Bay Area that wants to play around with an Arduino, Mitch Altman runs fairly regular workshops (every few months) at Noisebridge up in San Francisco. (<https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Noisebridge>)

</comment><comment><USER11> There is an opportunity for a side-business here. I cannot download really big files, so I buy my linux distros on DVDs. I wasn't able to find anyone selling Arduino, when I asked on a Arduino forum a nice person mailed me a copy, but I think someone with a fast connection and a web site could make a few dollars extra downloading and packaging open source software for people who can't download their own. I doubt that there is enough demand for this to be a main source of income, but the marginal costs if you already have a way of taking credit cards and the fast connection should be minimal.

</comment><comment><USER12> I can reccommend <http://hackaday.com> for DIY-hardware based fun. Ryan is right, the purchase of an arduino will spell the end of what little free time HN users have left :)

</comment><comment><USER13> hi everyone - use the code HACKERNEWS on adafruit.com and you'll get 10% all our arduino products and our kits. this expires on sunday so buy quickly, we usually do not discount arduinos :)

<comment><USER14> Do you ever plan on carrying the Netduino?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's something great about making something that affects the physical world, isn't there? I've written programs that manage billions of dollars and websites that support millions of users, yet I still get a thrill out of simple stuff like wiring an outlet or building a shelf.

</comment><comment><USER16> Arduinos are a ton of fun, myself and a couple other startup/web dev/hackers I know have gotten into them recently.

Warning: Shameless plug ahead

<http://blog.tomgraft.com/tag/arduino/>

<comment><USER17> I took a contest at my school to make a gps-waypoint-driven (rc)car.

Was really interesting interfacing the arduino with an h-bridge for motor control, GPS module, and servo.

These are powerful little devices.

The small bit of documentation I attempted is here: <http://arduino- car.blogspot.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thrilled that this is #1 for now. HN "Hackers" need to realize that the physical world exists beyond the console.

<comment><USER19> Sure, we do, but it's so pleasant to live in a space where you can do so much without having to go out and buy things or otherwise wait on the physical world. It's nice to work and learn on your own time at your own pace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is pretty cool, it seems just like the Lego Mindstorms[1] set I had as a kid, but without the rounded edges and nice connectors.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms>

</comment><comment><USER21> Arduino's are neat, I have one too. One caveat to be aware of is that Processing isn't very portable yet; so it's a bit of a lock-in there.

TI has some neat micro-controller kits in the same vein as the Arduino you should google for. Cheap too.

<comment><USER4> > One caveat to be aware of is that Processing isn't very portable yet; so > it's a bit of a lock-in there.

Processing (<http://processing.org/>) is different to the Arduino although the IDEs are based on the same code base. While the Arduino "language" is related to Wiring (<http://wiring.org.co/>) it's different too.

By lock-in do you mean lock-in in relation to the language/libraries (which is really a documented subset of C++) or the microcontroller (Atmel based)?

<comment><USER21> It's pretty much language/libraries. You can (and later, when you start writing sufficiently advanced projects w/ 'real-time' needs) write code on the low-level io. This isn't really supported or well documented and kind of defeats the purpose of being "portable."

The thing is that the language/libraries are a very stripped sub-set of C++ and their IDE does a lot of parsing/mangling to turn "sketches" into C++ programs. It can mangle perfectly legal C++ code.

The arduino APIs like digitalWrite do table-lookups to match the pin, port, and bit. Pretty inefficient and slow.

It's still a great little system though. People have come up with alternative implementations that (for example) implement the SBI/CBI instructions as constants you can use when calling the Arduino APIs to make things much faster. And it's not like you'll care about "lock in" unless you start building large projects and get tired of the Arduino way of doing things and want to move to an alternate board. Arduino makes a nice cheap kit and starter package for people who want to get their feet wet in embedded systems.

<comment><USER4> > their IDE does a lot of parsing/mangling to turn "sketches" into C++ > programs. It can mangle perfectly legal C++ code.

AFAIK the parsing is limited to extracting function prototypes for creating the function declarations which I wouldn't call "a lot". This has been known to miss certain legal C++ function prototypes formats though. Normally the solution is to manually write the declaration yourself and format the prototype so it doesn't get parsed.

It's not a hugely common occurrence though.

It is true that optimisation/efficiency hasn't been a huge focus and the lack of focus on it is "development policy": <http://code.google.com/p/arduino/wiki/DevelopmentPolicy>

While it's definitely not perfect the fact that it's based on avr-gcc makes the risk of lock-in less of an issue than some other platforms.

Plus, it's fun. :)

<comment><USER21> Quite true. I can be a little knit-picky.

However, those are the trade off's and that's not even all of them. It is possible because of avr-gcc to bypass the whole "sketch" thing they have going and compile/load your code without even running the iDE.

Like I said, I do like Arduino for what it is. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> @ryanwaggoner: Bug report -- the link to Sparkfun is broken

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> well, glad to hear that :D . and let me twist the knife in your "wound" : Join our community! <http://harkopen.com> \- and get more open source hardware projects , news and hackerspaces near you

</comment><comment><USER24> lol... I had the exact same thoughts when I got my Arduino a couple months ago. Now time to find a project...

<comment><USER25> Oh comment bait! With an Arduino, you could...

* Generate NTSC signals - <http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Main/TVout> * Make a mini http server - <https://code.google.com/p/webduino/> * Drive nixie tubes - <http://www.ogilumen.com/nixie-nixie-driver-kits-p-92.html> (don't kill yourself on the voltages)

Sigh. So many little projects, so little time...</comment></comment>


Christopher Poole Reveals Why He Walked Away - <AUTHOR> http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/4chans-overlord-christopher-poole-reveals-why-he-walked-away-20150313 <comment><USER2> Man. If there was ever a guy I feel awful for, it's moot.

Maybe awful isn't the right word, but sympathetic for.

Short of doing something incredibly brilliant in the future (which I wouldn't put beyond him), his life will be summed up as "the creator of 4chan" for quite some time to come.

He's a fairly well-known guy with a decent amount of celebrity to him, but it sounds like 4chan was overall a net negative for him monetarily. Further, 4chan is summed up as an incredibly hateful place to many people, basically "the worst part of the internet." His name is synonymous with that for likely the rest of his days.

Sure, it's earned him some credibility in the tech community and he can likely leverage that into something great if he really wants to - though it sounds like he wants to take a break from that for awhile.

I live in NYC and I've seen moot a couple of times in the past couple years. Both times he was doing something mundane like waiting for the train, and every time he was surrounded by what were clearly a group of anons asking him questions. Every time he seemed a little uncomfortable, like he was too polite to admit that he had grown out of 4chan and its community.

I imagine his personal life is a semi-constant reminder that he'll never be able to escape from 4chan, even by resigning. Lots of people will continue to associate him with the severe outbursts of hatred that stemmed from 4chan occasionally. Lots of anons will continue to encircle him while he's waiting for the 1 train.

I don't know, maybe I read too much into it. Or maybe I didn't and that's why he wants to go do something far removed from the internet.

<comment><USER3> Personally, I think that moot has done more to further the internet and modern culture than almost anybody out there--and that includes Reddit (and arguably Something Awful, but nobody wants to waste tenbux anyways).

4chan has provided and continues to provide a raw visage of how people behave given total anonymity. It has a wide ecosystem of boards and interests, and in the last six years has certainly left everyone who's lurked there a changed person.

Remember: near all of the bullshit memery, the image macros, the open discussion, the invasions, all started with 4chan.

If anybody else is successful, it's probably because they can point to the awesome parts of 4chan and say "We want to build that, but friendlier, better moderated, and less anonymous". It was a proof-of-concept, and a brilliant one.

It'll probably die off in the next five years, but it's done some amazing things and brought a lot of people together.

<comment><USER4> > in the last six years

It's older than that, right? What is the significance of this time frame?

<comment><USER3> It's one that I feel comfortable commenting on, nothing more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can see why the site may struggle to attract ad companies. What would the valuation of 4chan likely be? Could anyone monetize it?</comment>


Super UEFIinSecureBoot Disk: Boot Any OS or .efi File in UEFI Secure Boot Mode - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ValdikSS/Super-UEFIinSecureBoot-Disk <comment><AUTHOR> Super UEFIinSecureBoot Disk is a bootable image with GRUB2 bootloader designed to be used as a base for recovery USB flash drives.

Key feature: disk is fully functional with UEFI Secure Boot mode activated. It can launch any operating system or .efi file, even with untrusted, invalid or missing signature.</comment>


Twitter Looks the Other Way as Trump's Tweets Amplified by Artificial Network - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@geoffgolberg/twitter-looks-the-other-way-as-trumps-tweets-amplified-by-artificial-network-ce90f119e2d5 <comment><USER2> If amplification is really a "thing", I would encourage you to take a look at Trump's social media accounts. Most of the posts that show up underneath (replies) are people critical of him. The free advertising he gets across social media, cable news, radio, etc. in this way should dwarf a couple shill accounts. If someone retweets in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? I would rather give people the freedom and tools to see whoever they want to follow than ban these accounts for "hyperactivity". I find it hard to believe that robotic posting constitutes a violation of Twitter's TOS by itself - there's tons of companies that make it their business model to let you do so!

<comment><USER3> Should Twitter build and advertise a tool to let user opt in to suppression hyperactive users from their view of Twitter?

Should Twitter update their algorithm to give their judgment of a better content experience to users, or should they be hands off and let SEO spammers control the content experience?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd love for a twitter employee to comment here on what the internal reaons's for Trump's behavior and activity to be given special treatment and immunity.</comment>


Ask HN: Current college student with big goals. - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone,
I have been lurking around here for some time and am in love with this site. I figured now would be as good a time as any to ask my question.
I am a current college student majoring in Computer Science. I know that, after I am done with school, I want to start a startup at some point (not necessarily right out of school). I know it's going to involve a lot of hard work, but this is something I have been thinking about for a while now. So, my question is this: what sort of advice can you guys give me that will prepare me for such an undertaking. Thank you.
~Aaron <comment><USER3> 1\. Be good. Be very good. Don't be the "front-end guy" or the "back-end guy", or some other "guy". Once you know what you want to build, building software is about five things: algorithms that solve your problem, programming languages that express your algorithms, computer architecture that makes your algorithms run efficiently on real hardware, the practical toolchain, and the management of complexity of real software. So study algorithms, and then graduate algorithms, and then advanced graduate algorithms. Do every challenge problem online. Study programming languages to express those algorithms. You can get away with three: C, Lisp, Haskell. Everything else is crud. Study computer architecture and compilers to see how your programs run efficiently. Learn great tools (Emacs/Vim/Visual Studio/bash/Linux/OS X/Windows whatever - just great ones that you're damn good at). Learn how complexity is managed. Look at lare open source projects, study how they're organized, and contribute patches to understand how small changes can effect a large system.

2\. Learn what to build. Once you get really good, your time starts to be more valuable than gold. There will be very few people in the world who are as good (the internet will bias you to think that the world is full of great people - this ain't so, there isn't enough of 'em). You _owe_ it to people and to yourself not to bother with improving something by 1% or 10% because you're wasting time in opportunity cost and could be improving something by 1000%. Make sure what you're building is worth building, and make sure every line of code you write is worth writing, otherwise you will fail. Break the NIH syndrome in yourselves now (all good people have it, phenomenal people that build successful companies broke it in themselves). Learn to infer what people want.

3\. If you're that good, you will easily get a $100k job after graduation (probably more by then), and grow to $180k in a few years. That's very, very comfortable. It's not worth busting your ass 16 hours a day to build another CRM tool when you can have a $180k job. So don't start a business to start a business. Start a business to bring a meaningful change in the world. A huge change. A 1000% change. There are lots of hugely successful companies out there that do what's not meaningful to you - ignore them. But do make sure that what's meaningful to you is also meaningful to millions (hopefully billions) of others. You won't get rich writing Lisp compilers.

This is what matters. Most everything else is fluff.

<comment><USER4> I agree with most you said except a small detail: how is C good at expressing algorithms? There are far more expressive languages in the C family. The point of learning C I would argue is to have at least one low level language in your toolbox.

<comment><USER5> Learning C is also a very important step to understanding operating systems.

<comment><USER6> Which is actually not vital for doing a successful startup.

<comment><USER7> The parent said _understanding_, not writing your own[1].

To take an example of a web startup (just because the are the most common), here are some question that require understanding the basics of operating systems:

1) "why is my database cache constantly being swapped out to disk when there's enough memory in my machine"

2) "why are the pages taking so slow to load, even though I'm only serving a few hundred hits a second"

3) "what is my webapp doing that's making python/ruby take up 100% of the cpu" (to find this out, you'd likely be using gdb, ltrace and strace which very explicitly require at least a _passing_ familiarity with C and POSIX)

4) "why is there a process showing up in ps/top that I can't kill even with kill -9"

Finally, you certainly have to be a good programmer to start a startup: not the best one, not a "10x programmer", but a good one (irrespective of what sort of applications you write). You can't be a good one without understanding how your programs work.

[1] That said, I had my hands dirty in Linux source code when debugging an issue while working in (of all places) an email security company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Start now. Even if you don't have the time or resources to do something huge, make projects that can be of real use and benefit to people. Some you may charge for; others you may offer for free. Your users might be people at your college, in your community, or all over the world. No matter how small or large the userbase, whatever experience you can get will be helpful, and one of these projects may grow into a significant business.

<comment><USER9> Can't agree more with this comment. Depending on your degree, the amount of work required will be significantly less than the amount of time you have in the week. Not to mention that interest rates on student loans are dropping again, meaning living off student loans while you start your business and do school is a potentially much more successful way to go than any other.

The problem with starting "some time after" you graduate is how easy it is to burden yourself with life responsibilities (wife/kids, new car loan, mortgage etc) when you have real income and stability from a job. When you are halfway into getting your startup off the ground and ramen profitable and you graduate, you can maintain your poor college kid lifestyle much easier than a previously well off wage earner can go back to a poor college kid lifestyle.

This worked well for me, but I also didn't care for any of the other "college experiences". I got my partying (drinking, smoking, minimal sleep etc) out when I was in high school and my early 20's, so found most of my younger college peers boring when I eventually finished my CS degree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd say: focus. Get as much as you can out of being in school right now-- you're unlikely to get a chance again to spend 4 years dedicated solely to expanding your knowledge. Learn everything you can. Find out who the best professors are (ask around, you'll find out quick) and take whatever classes they are offering. (A good professor can make even the dullest subject come to life; a bad professor can kill even the most fascinating topic.) Learn what you can from your friends; don't pass up any opportunity to learn. And, finally, try to pick up as many good habits and disciplines as you can-- you'll find years from now, you still have some of them.

</comment><comment><USER11> Get to know all of your classmates as best you can. They are a big part of your future network, and potential startup collaborators.

<comment><USER12> Great point. Build a good reputation (both online and in person), hopefully while trying to help genuinely :) .

It really pays off much better than just being very good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Work for someone else's startup. That's the best way to learn how it works on the inside.

<comment><USER14> I cannot agree with this advice enough. Working for a startup, even as a summer intern, will give you a much clearer idea of what it actually means to run a company than reading HN every day.

You may even realize it's not what you want to do after college.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> 1\. The first rule to actually be able to build stuff is to learn _real life programming_ : know a couple of languages, their libraries and ecosystems. Tip: use open source tools

2\. Know _algorithms_ to make smart software. If you make a board game, A* comes in hadndy for the AI. If you make a service like dropbox Minimum bounding box algorithms lower your costs.

Now you can build some stuff. Time to sell.

3\. Learn the basics of finance and legal stuff of your country to be able to solve paperwork related stuff.

4\. Learn some marketing to attract users

Profit!

Tip: A lot more in Ask HN Archive - <http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive>

</comment><comment><USER16> Have some idea what you're going to do.

"I want to have a startup" is not a plan. It is a path to failure. If you haven't got any idea what you want that startup to do, you're just setting yourself up for disaster.

Real, productive startups happen when someone wants to do or create a specific thing, and then creates a startup as a vehicle for that thing.

A startup is not an end. It's a means.

</comment><comment><USER17> It depends a lot on what you want to do. Some business problems are not all that technical, some are highly technical.

Some startups are easy to bootstrap, others aren't.

The main advice I'd give you is this: Figure out what you really, really want to do... the thing that makes you most excited and passionate. And demand of yourself that you do it.

There's nothing worse than working very hard at something and realizing that you've put blood, sweat and tears into something you don't really give a damn about.

</comment><comment><USER18> 1\. Read code written by master programmers (e.g., <http://golang.org/src/>, <http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/plan9/sys/src/>) to learn how it's done and to keep you humble. ;) But beware the opposite danger of becoming disillusioned when you realize that most of the code you will encounter in the real world is not written by master programmers.

2\. Understand that much of what you learn to do as an undergraduate CS student are "historical reenactments" (<http://research.swtch.com/2008/03/rotating-hashes.html>). The core algorithms and data structures you need are almost always provided by the language or libraries.

</comment><comment><USER19> 1\. Plan to start your company in 10 years.

2\. Between now and then, work at a small company, a just-funded startup, a raw startup and a big company (maybe in that order, maybe in any order). Watch the management closely and LEARN.

3\. No matter how frustrating it is to work for someone else, stick to your plan.

4\. Keep your technical skills current.

5\. Learn management skills.

6\. Save your money - live frugally now so you can self-fund your startup and keep control of it.

7\. Become an expert or become good friends with an expert in some domain - gaming, architecture, finance, whatever.

8\. Do your startup in that domain.

9\. Develop a healthy lifestyle. You'll need your all your health and stamina to make the startup succeed.

10\. Regularly sell things on eBay and/or Craigslist to get used to selling to people.

11\. Watch how your non-technical friends use computers. They compose most of your customer base.

<comment><USER20> Having followed such a detailed long term plan from almost 14 years ago to realize my dream of starting a business, when I thought I didn't have the resources, the personality, the network, the background, the support or the backup, having worked in a a government R&D lab , a small company, a fortune 500 company, having completed 2 degrees, 1 Advanced Diploma, a Six Sigma Black belt certification...., with all dew respect to mhewett for the good intentions behind his advise..... please don't follow this advise.

(edit: Actually all that mhewett says, is right, observe as much as you can (surprisingly not many really do), try to learn whatever you think can be useful in the future, except for one very deadly thing(the fatal flaw) - <USER2> 'plan to start in 10 years'.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Forget the technical things. While in college, get a job in marketing. Get a second job in technology if you want, but chances are if you are a CS student that can actually program, then the technical side is the least of your worries.

Running a business is extremely hard for some people. Expose yourself to it. It would be even better if you worked for a smaller company to get a more holistic view of it.

When I was in college my first job was managing the entire ecommerce side of our business from building to maintaining to figuring up innovations. There were 4 of us. I got significant experience in accounting, marketing, cash flow, customer service... everything. Having that exposure has helped me immeasurably thus far.

</comment><comment><USER20> Start now.

Start a start up or go execute an idea or help somebody else execute an idea and use that as a tool for learning relevant stuff that is required to successfully execute an idea. Whatever reason you are not able to execute it, thats an indication of where you have to plug holes in your skill set, either by learning yourself or developing relationships with somebody who is strong in that area.

If you keep executing and keep plugging the holes in your skill set, you will have the fastest learning curve that no college education can provide by itself.

Do complete your college education, it does teach a lot of good basics on different useful stuff and its a great backup in case things don't work out with the business end by the time you complete education. But thats what it gives - basics, useful basics, basics that are not enough for anything but an entry level job.

College education + loads of experience by the time you complete education = killer resume.

This is from a guy who has done his fair share of education and waited too long to go after his dream ( of course, not too long to let the dream die or go after it now :))

Good luck.

(edit: If you start the action part now, you will also attract a network of friends and teachers who appreciate a person like you and can probably help you. That network you start building now can be a deal maker or breaker for succes later. )

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm in similar shoes. I've recommended this essay on HN before, but I found it to be really insightful.

<http://www.paulgraham.com/college.html>

I've basically come to the conclusion my time here in school is gain enough knowledge an experience in my field that when startup time comes I'll not just be quicker than competitors, but I'll know of better methods and techniques for doing so.

</comment><comment><USER23> All of the stuff said here re: building a product and working for a startup is awesome advice. There's one major thing missing: Learn how to acquire customers and retain them. You can build a great product, but if you don't know how to acquire customers, it's a disservice to the great product you built. CREAM- Customers Rule Everything Around Me.

<comment><USER24> Strongly agree with this. Also, it's worth noting that many people consider "startup"=creating a consumer-focused company with millions of users (i.e. Twitter; Yelp.) Often the most successful businesses focus on selling a lot to a little. There is a ton of opportunity on the enterprise side of the world.

My company was most successful after we stopped offering small accounts and focused on the customers paying us hundreds or thousands of dollars a month. We got pretty quickly to 7 figures after that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Focus on two things:

1\. Connecting and networking with others in the field. A blog is a great way to do this and get started.

2\. Build something said network will appreciate. It doesn't have to be the next twitter, maybe it's some dumb little app that a 5 year old kid will spend 10 minutes playing with and get bored. Remember we are all 5 year olds on the inside, except pg, he's 7.

</comment><comment><USER26> Look for potential cofounders. Make friends with people who have similar interests as you (hacking, startups) and whom you get along with really well. Building trust and learning what people are really like takes time and being friends for a longer time gives you the chance to do that.

</comment><comment><USER27> (1) Learn what people will pay for and how to convince them to do so.

(2) Make friends with and keep track of your talented classmates, especially those whose talents are in other areas.

(3) Learn how to evaluate folks in those other areas.

</comment><comment><USER28> One thing that hasn't been mentioned much yet is marketing. Read the big popular marketing books such as "Positioning" by Reis and Trout, because marketing is tough. There is little technical risk involved with most web companies. The biggest risk is not finding enough people to give you money.

</comment><comment><USER29> As someone who just passed out from college and is working on a startup, I would say do as much projects as you can during your college. Hence learn the art of starting and finishing.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who commented. Really great advice. It is much appreciated.</comment>


Responsible disclosure in the era of cryptocurrencies - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@coryfields/http-coryfields-com-cash-48a99b85aad4 <comment><USER2> Author found a bug in bitcoin-abc's transaction validation routines that meant anyone could have split the blockchain.</comment>


Ask HN: Is anyone interested in a site to help you find co-founders? - <AUTHOR> Is anyone interested in a site to help you find potential Co-Founders?  I know there's already a few that exist (cofounderslab, hn threads, etc..), but it seems like all of them have major flaws in some ways.  I've been becoming increasingly frustrated looking for a cofounder with a similar work-ethic that can compliment my skill sets.
It's been told the best way is to reach out to classmates and co-workers.  However, that seems severely limiting as I'm sure there's opportunities outside of my personal network (especially since I graduated a while back).  I may be a bit biased (I'm a software developer), but it seems like there's _many_  people looking for someone to execute an idea for them, rather than doing an actual partnership.  I've decided that even if just a few people could benefit from this, I'll make a site myself.
Does anyone else share this experience?  What do you think could be done better?
EDIT:  I've made a quick survey to help gather some thoughts on this - https://justin83.typeform.com/to/Ks5Dsi <comment><USER3> > It's been told the best way is to reach out to classmates and co-workers. > However, that seems severely limiting as I'm sure there's opportunities > outside of my personal network (especially since I graduated a while back).

One of the very important features in co-founders is knowledge of work-ethic and trust in each other. That's why it's often recommended that you co-found with people already in your circles. There are just so many additional unknowns when you're dealing with potential co-founders that you have no history with.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah , I completely agree. However, I feel there has to be a way to do this outside of the standard school/day-job. Reason I'm saying this is because I've worked in numerous open source projects and have met many friends that I would love to work with. The world is just too big to limit myself to a small circle of people. Also, take for example folks who live outside of major tech areas (an basically all rural locations). Where can they go to find good people to even begin building these relationships?

I don't have the exact answers on how to build this "trust" system into a platform (still researching). However I think it's definitely possible.

<comment><USER4> But you can count those people among your 'personal network'; that sounds like an ideal choice for undertaking what is essentially a 'large project' with someone - by having already done a smaller one with them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not exactly sure what it is about existing cofounder search sites, but I do feel that they leave much to be desired. Certainly they never worked for me.

Online dating sites attempt to solve a problem of approximately equal difficulty in my mind - creating a long-term relationship with somebody who initially is a total stranger. They leave much to be desired too, but have at least reached a functional level for many people, such as myself (met my wife through one of them several years ago).

I suspect it has something to do with the much smaller number of people on cofounder sites vs. dating sites, which makes reaching critical mass and iterating to improve the user experience that much harder.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would never use a site to find a co-founder. It seems like a waste of time. How would you vet someone? There is so much noise in the space and these kind of sites attract a ton of people who are not prepared/knowledgeable to found a successful business. I will only ever co-found with people who are part of my network and I know well enough already. Usually people who I have had some experience working with already. From time to time I have tried to be more loose in my approach but it has never led anywhere.

<comment><USER7> While I agree from a conceptual standpoint, the same argument could be made about online dating - and there are people successfully using it anyways. For some people getting to know a cofounder online might be the only way to find one (e.g. in more conservative parts of the world, where startups are a very rare phenomena).

<comment><USER6> Yes sure I can see your point. If a site was developed that solved the issues I pointed out then of course I would also reconsider. As a qualifier I would also like to point out that I was a non-technical co-founder in all my previous ventures and the frustrations led me to focusing on developing my technical side to the point where I can do it all myself now. I am between ventures currently but am much more inclined to go solo in the next one at least until I have basic idea validation and traction so I am probably not the norm in this regard.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're not in disagreement.. this is actually why I created the post, out of personal frustrations.

> If a site was developed that solved the issues I pointed out then of course > I would also reconsider

This is exactly what I'm going to try and solve. After all the feedback received, this will definitely be my next project I'm taking on. If you have any specifics you could add, please please take the survey and sign up for the beta list. Or send me an email (in my profile) and perhaps we can send a couple quick back and forths on the major issues that you think need addressed. Would be nice to connect with fellow entrepreneurs, even if it's just to validate ideas :)

<comment><USER6> I am very interested in peoples processes. How do you start on an idea, how do you validate, what tools do you work with, what would you do to get your first customers, what would you change to get the ones after that etc It is really helpful to get an insight into how people think and work. If I find a moment later I will try and elaborate a bit more.

<comment><AUTHOR> cool , feel free to email me direct, or better yet - fill out the survey so I can keep track :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The problem with co-founder sites and meetups is successful startups are usually formed by people who knew each other beforehand. This makes it difficult for solo founders who don't have skilled people in their network interested in such things.

An alternative idea would be to create a 1-3 month program for entrepreneurs and programmers to learn new skills, etc., but also to network and meet potential cofounders.

<comment><USER9> I met my co-founder and, after a 4hr conversation, decided I wanted him as a partner. We started working together within 3 weeks and its been smooth sailing for 1.5 years. We have already reached 7 figure revenue. Sometimes you meet people and you realize you are just on the same page with how you view things.

<comment><USER10> I think more often, the outcome is that while you're on the same page the rest of the book turns out to be very different. Glad it worked out for you though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The basic business question I have:

      How is using a website more efficient for vetting
      potential co-founders, than alternative methods?

The issue in finding cofounder's for people who are struggling to do so is separating signal from noise. One trend on the internet is that lowering the barrier to broadcasting, increases noise. For a highly selective process like finding a cofounder, the noise from people throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks may make finding candidates worth the effort of vetting harder rather than easier.

The marriage model for cofounders is probably useful. The dating analogy is perhaps less so because cofounding is not necessarily a two person relationship and the principle purposes and processes of business are a lot less clear cut.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've found it very hard to find a non technical co-founder who actually brings something to the table other than an idea like "let's do Uber for Pet sitters!".

<comment><USER13> Hey, I take offense to this comment ;) Just kidding of course being rejected is a great motivator for some. Having devs reject ideas inspired me to learn to program, and realize that there are a ton of bad ideas, and only a few deserve the time it takes to build.

<comment><USER12> Just to be clear, I wasn't talking about co-founders with unrealistic/ridiculous ideas. I was mostly concerned about co-founders who _only_ bring the idea to the table.

As a technical person, I'm mostly interested in finding a co-founder who would have solid domain knowledge, or have experience pitching to VCs, or any other skill that can actually contribute to the _execution_ of the idea.

Ideas are cheap, everyone has ideas, a good co-founder will help with the execution and there is plenty to do apart from the technical aspect.

<comment><USER14> I agree with this. And from a co-founder side show me someone that has actually talked to a few potential customers and people are willing to pay for the service. (B2B or Enterprise type market) Now let's talk about an MVP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> super-serial I saw a YC partner once say "we don't mind solo founders, it's just that you have to be 4 times as good." I've decided to focus on becoming 4 times as good.

If I build a product that can't be ignored then I'll have options for funding even as a single founder. Then I could get employees instead of partners and avoid the whole scary idea of someone corrupting my vision. It would be a huge time sink to find the perfect cofounder, and for someone like me it would cause tons of stress. You're supposed to basically marry someone. I'd rather just keep grinding outside of my 9-5 job and build the product myself.

</comment><comment><USER15> The difference between online dating sites and co-founder matching sites is that with dating, there is a well defined process to gauge mutual attraction over time with minimal investment.

You go on a date for an hour, get to know the other person and if there's a connection, do it again. Eventually, after a few dates, you might decide to become exclusive, after a few more, it might be a real relationship. And after a few years, it might lead to marriage.

Co-founder matching sites always seemed to me like you're skipping the whole 'dating' process and jumping straight to marriage.

I'd be interested in a site that had some way for me to get to know the other potential founder's work ethic, intelligence, integrity, and sociability without jumping straight into a legal business relationship right away. I don't mind if the process takes months to find the right one.

Co-founder matching sites should set a goal of finding the perfect co-founder 3-6 months from now. Now, their job should be to help qualified candidates go through the 'dating' process in the interim. THAT would be real value and I'd sign up and pay if I came across something like this.

</comment><comment><USER16> There seems to be a lot activity on [http://founderdating.com/](http://founderdating.com/)

I get plenty of email notifications from there after a friend asked for a referral.

<comment><USER17> Am I the only one noticing the spelling error on the frontpage in 'Connect with world-class entreprenuers and advisors'?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> We are a small team that maintains a site, called SideProjectors.

[http://www.sideprojectors.com](http://www.sideprojectors.com)

It's a market place where people can sell & buy side projects.

Awhile back, I've added an option for people to "search for co- founder/collaborator".

While we've seen hundreds of side projects being sold and bought, I think we haven't seen that many projects where people successfully find co-founders via our site.

Now we haven't aggressively pushed this feature, so I'm sure there are many things we can do to support, but from what we have seen, finding a co-founder is, SO much more than just going through a list of profiles.

I almost think if you want to do this, then you only invite really serious people and have them speak face to face via hangout or skype - or a feature that supports such thing.

I guess, since finding co-founder is such a difficult task, I think it needs to have a more "human" approach to it. Hope that helps!

<comment><AUTHOR> I've actually thought this exact thing before. A site with a curated list of potential entrepreneur partners. It would be tremendously difficult to do well though. But thanks for the comment, this gives me something to reflect on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think a model like assembly is a decent model...open up contributions to your project and offer shares to anyone who contributes in a meaningful way...i dont see why this cant be used to find a cofounder by actually working with them over time on the project.

</comment><comment><USER20> The current cofounder 'finding' sites are really bad. The problem is - <USER2> are mostly 2 types of people who join. 1)Those who genuinely have an idea are working hard to get it off the ground but not interested in partnering with someone else. 2)Those looking for better opportunities i.e employment. 3)People don't bother replying to emails which is rude considering there are other very serious people there who are looking for answers and maybe advice.

Honestly, I don't know what is going to work. I'm not sure the dating model is the best cause it doesn't seem to be working well.

You need to think of something completely new and different (easier said than done of course!)

</comment><comment><USER14> I kind of like assembly.com because you can find a group of people to contribute. I just wish there was a way to try and recruit to the project. Like interest, skills section. I have a domain name: bountysplit.com that could be used for recruiting. even just in the jobs market. it's on assembly.com with couple of my ideas. I'm a developer so I don't have the get something built problem. I have the getting traction problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I hear you. I also like Assembly but feel they're missing some key features (although I haven't formalized them in my mind yet). You've sort of hit one of my major peeves with alot of these sites - they don't seem to have any good way to find/recruit projects based on domain interest. If you haven't already, it would help me a great deal if you filled out the survey. I'm trying to get as much info as possible before I start making something :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm willing to help. I have a long and "interesting" experience with trying to build such sites :-) I'll drop you an email, an off-line discussion is probably more appropriate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! I'm definitely open to hearing about these "interesting" eperiences :) Been getting alot of responses and feedback lately, so yeah feel free to drop me a line if you haven't already (contact is in my profile)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Have you checked out [https://www.cofounderslab.com/](https://www.cofounderslab.com/) ?

When I was looking around, this seemed like the best option.

<comment><USER23> Nearly everybody there is a "business-something" searching for a "programmer", which in my narrow-minded view translates as:

"I have an idea which I think it's original and I want someone to work 40 hours per week to implement it. Then we can split the profit."

Sorry but ideas are cheap, implementation costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am very interested in finding a co-founder for an existing project (already has paying clients). I tried using the various websites like cofounderslab etc but it is tough. The reason is that finding a co-founder is like finding a date that could turn into a serious relationship (think girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife). So this takes time and effort and cannot be solved by a listing website.

Here are some of the problems/challenges I have faced:

\- Not everyone wants to become a co-founder. A lot of people just want to build things for you and get out. Think freelancers etc. Really smart people but not interested in becoming co-founders.

\- A friend wants to be your co-founder. Ok great. You like them and they are really good friends. But you know for sure that they don't have anything of value to offer to you. So you tell them "I would love to but what do you bring to the table" ? They cannot answer that and you are back to square one.

\- A really smart friend whom you know could build great things together loves his/her job. He is the Employee type. No matter how much you try to convince them of the great entrepreneurial life, they won't budge.

In my opinion, to find a co-founder who is not a friend or someone you know already, below are the steps:

1\. Initial contact with someone who has interest in becoming a co-founder. This can be solved with those listing type websites perhaps.

2\. AFTER that initial contact, what do we do This is where the listing websites fail and cannot add any more value. This step/problem needs to be solved. My suggestion is that we will need to work together on "small" or "baby" projects first that may or may not be related to any actual business/product. Heck, lets build a blog together. Lets see how we interact with each other personally and professionally. I will like to spend a lot of time with you knowing your both personally and of course professionally. You may be the best programmer or marketer but can you handle pressure ? Can you actually commit to anything ? Are you a quitter ? Are you an honest person ? Can I trust you ? What is your vision ? What is your end Goal ? What do you want out of life ? All these questions need to be answered in my opinion and really vetted.

3\. Once step 2 is reasonable secure, then lets actually become co-founders. Sign legal agreements, do vesting discussions, get lawyers involved etc ?

Just my 2 cents. I filled out your survey btw as well.

</comment><comment><USER25> have a look at [https://www.startus.cc/](https://www.startus.cc/)</comment>


Plaid Is Joining Visa - <AUTHOR> https://blog.plaid.com/plaid-and-visa/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038496](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038496)

<comment><AUTHOR> Understood. When I submitted this the WSJ article was still speculating and I thought from the horse's mouth would be a different perspective.

The Plaid post went live minutes before I submitted, then WSJ updated their article.

<comment><USER2> No problem! That's totally reasonable. Marking a story with [dupe] and including a link to the other thread is simply intended to help direct readers to where the discussion is. No scolding implied.</comment></comment></comment>


Twelve Simple Steps to Planning a Killer Blog - <AUTHOR> http://blog.publisha.com/articles/58130-twelve-simple-steps-to-planning-a-killer-blog

<comment><USER2> The notion that one should say something interesting does not find mention. After reading the article, that is not surprising.

<comment><USER3> Very amusing. As the author of that post, I originally didn't put in "Say something interesting" because I thought it was blindingly obvious. However, I've worked it into the post based on your suggestion, as "The Yawn Test", so thanks for that. There are now 13 steps rather than my initial 12.

Sorry you didn't find the post interesting. It wasn't supposed to be amazing new insights or anything, just a basic checklist. As CEO of Publisha I work with bloggers and publishers every day, and a large number of them don't actually know who they're writing for! This post was really an attempt at "Don't run before you can walk." But hey, if you're already running then good on you!

Ian.</comment></comment>


Suggest HN & PG: Fix the flag button - <AUTHOR>

The flag button on HN is broken and needs to be fixed.
It seems like a good idea at first glance. Unfortunately, it instead ends up stifling discussion by allowing a limited cadre of people to remove posts that, while still interesting to most of us, they don't like. The most notable recent example is the rapid flagging of positive Surface Pro reviews, which consistently showed up below posts that had less upvotes and had been around longer.
It has a few main problems:
- Anyone can do it.
- A flag seems to negate more than one upvote.
- Flags are consistently used to silence discussion that some people don't like.
There have been several popular pleas recently to stop using the flag button inappropriately. While these may have had some effect, some people will continue to use it inappropriately, no matter how much we ask them not to. The flag has good intentions, but it's simply used as an extra-powerful downvote by many.
There are two immediately obvious solutions:
- Remove the flag button entirely.
- Add a significant karma threshold to the flag button. Since high-karma HN users are more likely to be active on the forum anyway, a small number of high-karma users can keep the spam off the site, while preventing a small number of users from preventing the community from organically choosing these to prominently display.
These fixes will not overrun HN with spam for the following reasons:
- Most users only see the frontpage. It already takes a large amount of upvotes in a short amount of time to reach the front page, and spam wouldn't generally achieve that.
- Spam generally doesn't show up on the new submissions page, indicating it's not being submitted that much in the first place.
- The moderators are quite vigilant when it comes to high-profile content. This can be readily seen by their constant retitling of posts that hit the front page. The tiny amount of spam that might hit the front page would be easily and quickly squashed. <comment><USER2> I'll make the obligatory comment that if you want to opine about how HN should work, email "info". Its in the guidelines [1] and it saves time. Thanks.

[1] "Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us questions about Y Combinator, _or to ask or complain about moderation_ ). If you want to say something to us, please send it to email@example.com."

<comment><AUTHOR> This isn't moderation (that would be the retitling posts that keep showing up). This is flagging, which is a user action.

Pedantry aside, you're probably right. I'll write them an email, though I'm not hopeful as to the results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Based upon reports, it is my understanding that people who abuse the flag button lose the option.

It is my impression that high karma does preclude people from flagging particular topics based upon their biases and preferences.

<comment><AUTHOR> But it seems pretty obvious that these measures haven't fixed it.

In addition, it doesn't seem to be so much the high karma people that are the problem, rather the large numbers of low karma people who exercise their unfettered use of the flag button liberally and inappropriately.

Frankly, I don't see a good reason why flagging exists in the first place. Unrestricted downvoting is really what has made Reddit's community such a miserable morass, and flags are barely any better.

<comment><USER3> _"But it seems pretty obvious that these measures haven't fixed it."_

It is not obvious to me that flagging is broken. The discussions sparked by the first Surface Pro reviews were filled with partisan trolling and largely bereft of insight. It wasn't the news that was crap, but the community's reactions. The stupidity to intelligence ratio was high and the temperature was rising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You need to turn showdead on. There's plenty of spam on the New page.

Sometimes it only take 3 votes to get to the front page.

High karma users are just as capable of "misusing" the flag as low karma users.

You suggest that excessive flagging is a problem, but because of the opaque nature of the HN upvote / downvote / flagging system it's hard to know what got flagged and how many flags they got.

<comment><AUTHOR> I apologize for the showdead mistake - that should have been pretty obvious. Still, these posts don't get upvoted, so the front page remains untrammeled, and showdead filters them out anyway.

There were some screenshots floating around recently (and I experienced the situation myself) where a positive Surface Pro review was showing up far below other, older posts with fewer upvotes. This is just the most recent example - it's come up many times.</comment></comment>